The Warehouse At Eureka

Railway warehouse, built c.1849 by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Company.

The building is constructed of narrow sandstone bricks laid in courses with slate roofs, featuring ashlar dressings to windows and cast iron lintels to the cart doors. It is relatively long and narrow with curved long sides.

The main part is single storey with eight bays. On the east side are multi-paned round arched windows with ashlar dressings in each bay; the west side has five similar windows, some blocked, along with two cart entrances with double wooden boarded doors and decorative cast iron lintels. The north gable end has a similar door offset to the left, with a surviving rail track leading into the building. To the right of this is a three-light square-headed window with stone mullions, and above it a round window grille with ashlar dressings.

Attached to the south gable end is a two-storey section of five bays. On the east side of this section, the ground floor has similar round arched windows, while the first storey is blank. The west side has a single window and cart entrance matching those elsewhere. At the south-west corner of the building is a two-storey office extension with two 9-paned windows on each floor and a blocked door to the right. The roof features a pediment and a central chimney stack with three pots. The gable end has a blocked cart entrance to the right with stone infill and a round window above. The office extension has another window on each floor on this side.

Internally, the ground floor of the main shed is a single open space. The single-storey element has timber queen post trusses. The railway track enters from the north along the east side of the building, flanked by an area for transferring freight between railway wagons and road vehicles accessing the building from the cart doors on the west side. The two-storey element has iron beams supported by cast iron columns on the ground floor, with further columns on the first floor. A small cellar is present. A raised unloading platform at the southern end is served by a series of traps or chutes from the first floor.

The first railway line to reach Halifax was a branch from the Calder Valley Line built by the West Riding Union Railway in 1844, terminating at Shaw Syke Station. The Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway extended the line northwards, and the Ordnance Survey map of Halifax from 1849 shows both the extended line and the warehouse among other buildings, now demolished. The warehouse appears shorter on the 1849 map and is consistent with the single-storey element as it then existed. The two-storey section to the south was added shortly afterwards. The office extension was in place by 1907. The building is currently unused.

The railway track running into the building from the north survives for several metres beyond the building as far as the current boundary fence.